By Debra Mayeux/Staff writer
Monday, March 18, 2002
AZTEC - New information has surfaced surrounding the alleged March 25, 1948, crash of a UFO in Hart Canyon north of Aztec.

UFO investigator and journalist Linda Moulton Howe has claimed that the crash date is wrong, and she has talked to the eyewitnesses to prove it. Howe will present her findings during the Fifth annual UFO Symposium this weekend in Aztec.

"I have interviewed some people who are still alive, who saw it in March of 1949," Howe said in a telephone interview. "They can pinpoint the year because they were living in a rental home at the time."

Howe said it was the only time in the lives of Hulon and Geneva Pace that they lived in a rental home. The couple and their son have come forward and said they remember the crash, and they read about it in The Farmington Daily Times, which was published weekly in the 1940s.

"The Pace's son Glen had a paper route, and he remembers that there was a headline about a crashed disc ... or a crashed object in Hart Canyon," Howe said.

The Paces and a few others interviewed by Howe, also have claimed that the newspaper retorted the article a few days later, stating that it was a hoax.

Numerous people including Daily Times staff have searched the archives for articles on UFOs. There was nothing found to be published between 1947 and 1949 concerning the crash in Aztec.

Howe has also spent time searching for these lost articles the Paces told her about.

"For seven years I went on the same kind of search," Howe said. "I called maybe 50 small newspapers' libraries."

She too came up empty handed.

There was, however, a front-page article March 19, 1950, about a UFO armada flying over the city the previous day.

In an article in 2000, Glen Pace recalled the day the armada flew over Farmington. "I was 10 years old at the time," he said.

"I came out on the playground for recess and someone said, 'Look up there.'"

When he looked up, Pace saw approximately 30 disc-shaped, silver ships hovering over Farmington.

"They were in a triangular formation, and they made sudden moves all together," he said.

The ships were visible for about 10 minutes before they disappeared.

"When they left, they turned on their side," he said. "They were gone in a second. Boom, they were out of sight."

"Something very unusual happened in March 1949 and 1950 in the Farmington and Aztec area," Howe said.

Howe alleges that someone cleaned out the newspaper libraries. When asked who, her answer was, "No question, our government," she said. "There could be no other explanation. For our government to go in and say, 'We're going to clean those libraries,' would not have been too great a deal."

Howe, who has received a number of awards for investigative reporting, said the government had a lot more control over things in the '40s and '50s. She used now deceased New Mexico Congressman Steve Schiff as an example.

"In 1997, Steve Schiff asked the Government Accounting Office to make public all military files pertaining to New Mexico and Roswell," she said.

Schiff was told that all of those documents concerning Roswell Army Airfield in 1947 had been destroyed without authorization.

But how would the government go into a private newspaper and clean out its archives? Howe said that perhaps the government appealed to a man like former Daily Times publisher Lincoln O'Brien, using patriotism as a motivation.

"Would the government have appealed to him to suppress information in the interest of being an American patriot," Howe asked. "The government has thought that they are super patriots by keeping this secret."

Howe said that Hulon and Geneva Pace know what they saw in 1949.

She will broadcast their tape-recorded interviews at the upcoming UFO Symposium making her presentation similar to a live radio report with slides.

"There will be four segments in people's voices, possibly a fifth," she said adding that these recordings hold a great historical significance. "These voices will not be with us forever."

This will be Howe's second visit to Aztec, an area that she feels is a major find to ufologists. "Aztec is a very important piece, because of the technology (the government) received there," she said.

Howe, who has been a featured guest on the Art Bell show, does draw a crowd. She will join other noted UFO researchers like Stanton Friedman and Dennis Balthaser.

"We're giving Roswell a run for their money," said Beth McClure, a member of the Friends of the Aztec Library, the group sponsoring the event.

Howe will speak from 8-10 a.m. Sunday during the symposium, which opens Thursday with an original play festival at the Farmington Gateway Museum.

Information: Aztec UFO Information Center, (505) 334-9890 or on the Web at www.aztecufo.com.

Debra Mayeux: debram@daily-times.com

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Thomas Ropp
The Arizona Republic
March 18, 2002 12:00:00

Then:

It may have been the greatest UFO sighting in history.

Or the lamest.

By most accounts, a large "V" formation of lights flew silently over the state for up to two hours on March 13, 1997. It traveled along a 300-mile corridor from the Nevada line on a southern heading through Prescott Valley and Phoenix to the northern edge of Tucson. Later in the night, a second event occurred when a series of bright lights hung on Phoenix's southern horizon like a string of glowing pearls.

Now:

Five years after the Phoenix Lights streaked across Arizona, believers and skeptics are still worlds apart as to what took place.

"The Phoenix Lights case was the most dramatic UFO event we have ever handled," said Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle.

The official military explanation: the "V" formation was a squadron of military planes and the balls of light were high-intensity flares.

Eyewitnesses Charles and Joan Painter of Sun City West saw the flying "V" around Casa Grande while driving on Interstate 10. They pulled off the road to get a better look. Today, they still can't agree on what they saw, but neither felt it was extraterrestrial.

"These were conventional airplanes, but perfectly quiet," Charles said.

"I think it was one of those Stealth bombers," Joan said.

Terry Mikel of Phoenix said he saw the lights over the southern part of the Valley.

"To me they looked like a bunch of flares strung together. They flickered then blinked out."

Phoenix ufologist and technician Jim Dilettoso analyzed video of the lights and interviewed hundreds of eyewitnesses. Two years after the event, an Air Force pilot who had chased the lights in an F-15 stepped forward, he said. The pilot, flying under 7,000 feet, had close contact at Indian School and Seventh Avenue.

"It startled him," Dilettoso said. "He felt they were individual balls of light, 3 to 5 feet in diameter and in touch with each other. He couldn't explain how they could fly and hover."

The Phoenix Lights received world attention; the event was taken more seriously outside Arizona. Former Phoenix Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood said the local media ridiculed her when she asked for and was denied an investigation. Now living with her husband, Mike, in a cabin in the Bradshaw Mountains near Dewey, Barwood still finds it incredulous how she was treated.

"All I wanted them to do was investigate this," she said. "I never said anything about extraterrestrials."

But, perhaps, Dilettoso has the best take on that strange night.

"I don't know what it was," he said. "I only know what it was not."

Find more on the Phoenix Lights and other UFO sightings at the National UFO Reporting Center's Web site: www.msatech.com/nuforc.

Reach the reporter at thomas.ropp@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-6880

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Tommy Woodard is a photo librarian for the Utah Film Commission, and this past Tuesday he took this photo in Provo Canyon.

Tommy Woodard, Photo Librarian, Utah Film Comm.: “Well it has the flying saucer shape that’s so familiar. A saucer, that’s all I can think of.”  Tommy was in the canyon shooting still photos for a possible film location. He says when he took the shot of the mountainside, he never noticed the strange object.

ION: “Did you see that when you took the picture?” ANSWER: “I didn't. I had no idea it was there when I took the shot. So it really surprised me when I opened it back in my office. And I saw the disc shaped object, and the closer you get, it looks like a flying saucer."

His office co-workers found it amusing as well. Everyone has dropped by for a peek.

Not knowing what it was, Tommy contacted Hill Air Force Base to see if they had any planes flying in the area. He also sent a picture to the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle. But the response from there was less than enthusiastic.

Tommy: "So he said it kind of looked like a bird. But, I mean, it must have been a bad picture I sent to him, because how can that look like a bird?"

Tommy Woodard enjoys science fiction so this has really peaked his interest. He says he wouldn't necessarily be disappointed if this turns out to be just a plane or a big bird. But if the mystery is never solved?

Tommy: "That'll be ok with me. It'll just be in the back of my mind for a long time!"

Since January, more than 1200 UFO sightings have been recorded on the National UFO Reporting Center website. There are two reports from Utah.

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